


Dean 2013

by silvrhuntress



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s05e04 The End, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-18
Updated: 2011-03-18
Packaged: 2017-10-17 02:07:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silvrhuntress/pseuds/silvrhuntress





	Dean 2013

Dean didn’t come to see Castiel.

Ever.

Except on business.

Another raid, and he needed a shooter? Medics in need of drugs for their butcher-block surgery? Hunting down the woman he’d chosen for that evening, only to find she’d ended up in Castiel’s bed instead, along with three or four others? Sure.

Any other time? No. They didn’t talk, except for ‘Hey’ and ‘Pass that’ and ‘You set for ammo?’ and ‘Advance by fire and movement’.

For the first year, Castiel had tried to hold Dean’s soul together, but Dean’s wounds were deep and Castiel’s hands were too weak. For the second, Castiel had gone to others, asking for help, for advice, for anything that could give him back Dean Winchester. For the third, Castiel had simply waited, his faith slowly dying inside.

He told people he’d lost his grace because all the other angels were gone. It was just one of many lies he told, these days.

He’d lost his faith because he’d lost Dean Winchester.

He hadn’t abandoned Dean, of course. Everything that he was, even diminished, would never allow that. He followed Dean across the country, gathering up the ragged remnants of hunters and survivors and helped turn the old campground into a secure military compound against the rising tide of Croats streaming from the cities.

Logically, he should have been their leader, with his thousands of years of experience battling the forces of Hell and the enemies of Heaven, but Castiel wasn’t a leader. He had been created to perfect obedience.

Of course, he’d Fallen, more than once, so ‘perfect’ was a matter of perspective.

Imperfect or not, he gave that obedience to Dean, and that was the last touch that Dean needed to take over the encampment. He had charisma, experience, a ferocious courage – and a pet angel, even if that angel had lost his wings. By the time Castiel discovered that alcohol affected him, now that his grace was gone, Dean didn’t need him, except as another soldier.

As it turned out, Castiel was a pretty lousy soldier, once he lost his grace. It was like fighting without your eyes or hands or spine – it just couldn’t be done as effectively as in the old days.

As it turned out, though, Castiel was very, very good in bed. And there were a lot of people – almost everyone in the compound – who was willing to see if he lived up to the rumors that spread like wildfire. It was actually surprising how easy it was. All he really had to do was pay attention.

Anyway, when the beaded hangings rattled in the doorway, Castiel looked up through a haze of pot (which grew literally like weeds around here, thanks to some careful tending) and the distilled don’t-ask-what-it-was-made-from moonshine that had been popping up in long-term military encampments since cavemen banded together to take down mammoths. He felt a pleasant sort of anticipation coiling in his belly, wondering who’d come to find his bed, not really hoping it was anyone in particular. He had no favorites, after all.

Leave it to fate to prove him a liar. Dean didn’t come to see Castiel except on business, and at this hour, with no alarms ringing to call the camp to arms, there was no business.

Except… his visitor was Dean.

By the flip in his gut and the way his heart stuttered, Castiel guessed he did have a favorite, after all.

Dean had once been a hardass, live-life-to-the-fullest, riding-the-knife’s-edge hunter. Castiel could barely remember that version of Dean. It was as if life (if you could call it that) had scoured away any last remaining bits of softness, leaving only the steel frame beneath. Then, as if that wasn’t enough, all his edges had been sharpened until getting near him meant you’d cut yourself and bleed to death while he just stared with cold green eyes and debated if you should be composted or eaten because the encampment was on the verge of perpetual starvation.

Castiel knew he should’ve gotten to his feet, but he wasn’t sure he could make them work properly. So he sat there on the floor, vaguely trying to remember what he’d been doing in the first place. When incense tickled his nose, he remembered. Meditation. As if that would somehow get back what he’d lost.

Hardass commander Dean Winchester got two steps inside and swept the room with his gaze as if looking for threats. That in itself burned away a little of Castiel’s pleasant mind-fog. The new-and-not-so-improved Dean should’ve looked for danger before he’d even made that first step into the room.

“You’re not okay,” Castiel observed, which struck him as brilliantly insightful. Of course, that could have been the pot.

“We took out Naberius,” Dean said, his low, rough voice made even lower and rougher over the past couple of years.

“Hey. Good.” Castiel got to his feet, vaguely thinking that this called for some sort of celebration. Naberius was one of Lucifer’s preachers, sent to convert the humans who hadn’t been infected by the Croatoan virus yet. Since Castiel’s body was cooperating enough to let him stand, he took a tentative step toward Dean.

“Ari died. Jackie. Ethan. Greg. Wilson. Zoe. Seth. All dead.”

Castiel closed his eyes, hoping he’d remember them, though his memory wasn’t what it used to be, either. He remembered that once, he would have prayed for them, but now, nobody was home to pick up either the prayers or their souls. If the hunters hadn’t all been either infected or conscripted into the war against the Croats, they would’ve had job security for ten generations with all the vengeful spirits that had cropped up over the last few years.

“Only me and Wilks got out.”

Castiel wanted to say that Dean was a survivor, but he really wasn’t. In fact, he was very good at finding new ways to kill himself. Once, it had been Castiel’s job to try and stop that.

“I shot Wilks when we made it out the city gates. He was infected.”

“Oh.” Now, Castiel knew he should have had something more eloquent to say, but pot wasn’t exactly the drug of choice for great orators. Absinthe made poets, opium made writers, so what made orators?

Dean cut into that meandering thought with a growling sort of inhale, and suddenly Castiel’s tranquil room was all sparking restlessness and anger as Dean paced, getting mud all over the piles of carpet Castiel had scavenged to soften the floor. He didn’t always make it to the bed. He had rules about people taking off their shoes before they came in, just to keep the carpets as clean as possible in a world without steam cleaners and vacuums.

He didn’t say a word about Dean’s heavy boots.

“I have to keep doing this shit, Cas.”

A little electric shock went through Castiel when he heard Dean speak his name – not the name God had granted, but the more important one that Dean had given him.

“Tell me I can’t stop.” Dean raised his fists and lashed out at the wall, flattening his hands at the last second to lean instead of hit. He braced himself as though he couldn’t stand, his whole body screaming with tension.

Castiel was nothing if not obedient. “You can’t.” Then, figuring Dean needed more than that, he added, “No one else can do this, Dean.”

“Fuck.” Dean hung his head between his braced arms. His worn shirt was strained tight across his shoulders, fraying at one shoulder where it had been inexpertly sewn up after a fight. Dean’s flesh bore an identical scar and Castiel wondered if it had been as inexpertly repaired.

After Dean didn’t move for a couple of minutes, Castiel started to get worried. Once, he would have gotten right next to Dean, craving the feel of his soul, needing to be close enough to sense the brand on Dean’s body that marked him as Castiel’s.

Castiel hadn’t been closer than five feet from Dean for almost two years.

Dean’s head came up and he took a sharp breath, pushing aggressively away from the wall, as if it suddenly offended him. He turned, hard eyes fixing on Castiel for only a moment, before he looked away. There really wasn’t much to Castiel’s room – an empty area with a lot of carpets and pillows, the alcove with his bed (which was actually three scavenged beds crammed together), and some shelves.

He spoke, his voice almost too soft for Castiel to hear. “I’m tired, Cas.”

Wasted or not, Castiel knew that something was definitely wrong. He went to the shelf and dug through the detritus until he found a baggie. He had four ecstasy tablets left, but he only needed half of one at the moment, just enough to sharpen his wits.

Dean didn’t say anything. He just watched Cas dry-swallow half of the tablet he’d broken.

It took Dean’s sharp regard to make Castiel remember he was a host. “Wait,” he said, realizing that he actually had Dean in his home. He crawled up the length of his middle bed and took hold of the headboard of the left-hand bed so he could give it a push away from the wall. He twisted and wriggled to get an arm down into the dusty space beneath the beds, searching. His fingers brushed spiderwebs and discarded clothes and then finally dusty glass.

Victorious, he pulled the bottle out of its hiding place and held it out to Dean. “There are glasses somewhere over there,” he invited, waving a hand toward the corner of the room by the shelves.

Dean’s green eyes went wide. “That’s – that’s fucking Bushmill’s?”

Castiel checked the label, reading it over twice, quickly. “It doesn’t say ‘fucking’ on it,” he pointed out, offering it once more. He probably should have gotten off the bed, but that was too much effort.

“Where the fuck did you get it?”

Castiel had to dredge through his memory. He vaguely remembered taking it from Bobby’s, but bringing up Bobby was a great way to send Dean into a killing rage. “I’ve had it for years,” he finally said. “Since before we got here.”

“And you’ve just been hiding it?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“For you,” Castiel said easily, propped up on his elbows, still looking at Dean. It felt like he’d been watching Dean since before time began. It was strange seeing only the shape of Dean’s form and not the heat of his soul.

Dean looked down at the bottle Castiel was still holding. “Fuck me,” he said quietly.

Suddenly, Castiel didn’t need the ecstasy to get through his mental haze. “I would love to,” he said, his throat suddenly dry.

Dean blinked, his gaunt face slack with momentary confusion. Then his eyes went wide and he looked around uncomfortably at anything but Cas. “It’s – Cas, it’s a saying…”

“Oh. Right,” Cas said, suddenly wanting to crawl under the bed and die. Instead, he rolled over so he could crawl off the bed and pushed the bottle into Dean’s hands. Dean took it automatically, freeing Castiel to head for the wire drying rack where he separated leaves, stems, and seeds. He was too sober for this kind of situation.

As he was packing the wooden pipe that someone had carved for him (he couldn’t remember who and felt vaguely guilty about that), he felt a hard, strong hand clamp around his arm, right under his short sleeve, skin-on-skin. It was like getting hit by lightning. He hadn’t sensed Dean’s approach, but the touch… nothing could make him forget the impact of Dean’s touch.

“Cas.” Dean’s voice was as rough as the calluses on his hand.

That voice dragged his gaze away from his hands, though really, he didn’t need to watch. He looked over his shoulder at Dean and almost cried, wanting to see his soul, knowing that he couldn’t.

“Cas,” he repeated, his hand giving a little tremor.

Castiel put down the pipe and the weed so he could turn and put his hand over Dean’s. “I’m here, Dean.”

“You – This – This wasn’t inventoried.”

The night was turning into one disappointment after another. Castiel turned back, needing the pot even more now. “No,” he sighed, not even bothering to brace against the reprimand. Dean was big on rules, which was ironic, considering he’d spent most of his life breaking them. Of course, these rules were HIS, and that made all the difference.

Castiel used a twig to transfer fire from a candle to the pipe bowl. Matches were also in short supply. He inhaled deeply, not really tasting the smoke; he just needed it to work fast, before Dean started screaming at him.

“Why’d you hide it?” Dean asked roughly.

There were no clues to his mood in his voice, so Castiel fell back on the honesty that had once irritated Dean so much. “For you.”

“What?”

Castiel didn’t answer until he took another deep hit, closing his eyes, holding the smoke as he listened to his heart beat. “I didn’t want it confiscated. It was for you.”

Dean’s hand left Castiel’s arm. The absence of his heat felt like ice on Castiel’s skin. Cupping his hands around the pipe bowl for warmth, trying to make up for that absence, Castiel sat right down on the floor and closed his eyes. He heard some noise, but it didn’t register clearly, mostly because he was trying not to hear Dean walk out on him.

When Dean touched him again, it caught Castiel by surprise. “You’re still here,” he observed brilliantly, looking up through a cloud of smoke.

“Yeah.” A moment later, Dean sat down next to Castiel, facing him, and leaned against the wall. He put down two of Castiel’s glasses, both chipped but as clean as anything ever got in a camp with no running water.

Castiel had to watch Dean; it was like a compulsion. He couldn’t meet Dean’s eyes, so he watched Dean’s hands instead, working quickly and efficiently to open the bottle, tilting it, pouring splashes of old, rare whiskey into each glass.

Two glasses. Castiel looked up into Dean’s eyes, silently asking.

In answer, Dean took away Castiel’s pipe and tossed it onto the brass plate that served as an incense brazier. It scattered the sand that Castiel used to diffuse the heat.

“Why the fuck haven’t you left me, Cas?” Dean asked softly, placing one of the glasses in Castiel’s hand instead.

“I’ll never leave you,” Castiel said with that pure honesty again.

“Fuck.” Dean picked up the second glass and Castiel expected him to speak the words of a toast, to ritually memorialize the fallen – Bobby, those who’d been lost on today’s raid, anyone (except HIM, because no one mentioned HIS name, ever). But instead Dean just lifted the glass to his lips and drank without his usual aggression, as if he were legitimately focused on the taste and not the afterburn.

Not sure what to do, because he wasn’t really entirely human, Castiel also drank. The taste surprised him, rich and smoky, much better than he’d expected. It tasted like Dean, like memories of drinking whiskey at bars and in cheap motel rooms, of a time when taste meant nothing to Castiel, but somehow he’d learned to associate this taste with Dean anyway.

Dean let out a sigh and leaned his head back against the wall. “Why, Cas?”

Guessing that the ‘why’ was far more profound than anything he could currently guess at, Castiel remained silent. Dean’s knee burned where it touched Castiel’s, even through a layer of jeans and the softly worn cotton yoga pants Castiel preferred to wear at home. He let the sound of Dean’s breathing fill his ears and simply watched, seeing the haggard lines on Dean’s face, the stubble that was just this side of out of control, the darkness surrounding his closed eyes.

“Fuck. Can’t you at least make up a damned answer?” Dean snapped abruptly, his mercurial mood darkening. He reached for the bottle to pour himself another drink, then topped off Castiel’s, even though he’d only had a sip.

“Probably not,” Castiel admitted.

“Fine. Truth, then,” Dean demanded, tossing back this second drink with far less regard for its quality.

Castiel looked down at Dean’s hands. Like everything else in the camp, they were dark with ground-in dirt, the nails ragged, cuticles dry and bloody around sharp little triangles of skin. “I remembered you once said this was the finest whiskey anywhere, but you’d never been able to afford it,” he said softly, still staring at Dean’s hands. “I never figured out when to give it to you, and then you ordered everything inventoried so I hid it, because it was for you. And then, you stopped…”

Realizing he was about to cross from memory into accusation, he trailed off and shrugged, taking another sip. This one drove the last taste of pot off his tongue, replacing it with a rich smokiness that he’d smelled and tasted in a hundred motel rooms across the country, in a better time. Like now, Dean had pressed the glasses into his hand, only he’d been laughing those times, playing at the nearly impossible game of get-the-angel-drunk. Castiel hadn’t understood half of what Dean said and had picked up on even less of Dean’s body language. Sometimes, Castiel felt almost like Dean was trying to seduce him, as if he was about to escalate the game to a new level, but it had never happened.

Strange. Castiel couldn’t remember who’d been in his bed last night when he’d gone to sleep, but he could recall every single time Dean had touched him, whether it was a casual brush in passing, a punch thrown in anger, or those few desperate times Dean had grabbed hold of Castiel by the arm or shoulders, needing his support. He could remember the heat of Dean’s breath not an inch away from his own lips, the feel of Dean’s body pressed against his.

Dean rubbed a hand across his eyes and took a slower sip from his glass. “I’m such an asshole, Cas. And it’s just gotten worse, since all this… this…”

There really weren’t any words for ‘this’. People threw around things like ‘apocalypse’ and ‘Hell’ and ‘Croats’ but no word was big enough to encompass it all.

Once, Castiel would have had the certainty of his faith in Heaven’s plan. Or he would have had his desperate quest for answers to the questions fired by the terrible, burning doubt deep inside. Now, he had nothing but the despair of the end of the world.

And Dean.

His hand was trembling when he reached out to touch Dean’s hand, daring what he hadn’t dared in years. He couldn’t actually bring himself to say anything; he was too scared to screw this up, even though he didn’t know what ‘this’ was.

“Cas,” Dean said, and the word ripped from his throat almost like a sob. He closed his eyes and hung his head, jaw tensing. “Why the fuck didn’t you go with them?”

Them. The angels.

Castiel put the glass down on the floor carefully, not wanting to spill it. The loss was there, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as he might have once expected. He’d Fallen and died and come back, all for Dean. He didn’t need the Host of Heaven.

“I told you,” he finally said. “I’ll never leave you.”

Dean cursed and jerked his hand out from under Castiel’s, but only so he could reach up and touch Castiel’s face, the move so quick that there wasn’t even an instant of rejection before the heat of Dean’s touch returned to Castiel’s body. “I cost you everything,” he said tightly. “I took – I took everything from you and gave you nothing in return except this fucking Hell on Earth.”

This time, Castiel knew better than to speak, because he might say that he didn’t want everything he’d lost – even his grace. He only wanted one thing, but that was the one thing he’d never mention, the one thing he’d never ask for.

He couldn’t stop himself from pressing his face into Dean’s touch, though, wanting to imprint it on his skin.

“Cas…”

Realizing what he’d done, Castiel pulled his head back, looking reluctantly up into Dean’s eyes.

Dean opened his mouth to speak, then closed it and swallowed, licking at his lips. “I’ve never… thanked you.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Cas,” Dean protested roughly, moving his hand again to cup Castiel’s jaw. He ran his thumb against the grain of the beard that had been growing in for the past few days, because Castiel had learned that shaving while stoned was bad, and he hadn’t been sober for quite a while. “Yeah, Cas. I do.”

Castiel wanted to stop him and didn’t, and he recognized that as pure selfishness. He’d tried to avoid being selfish; he pulled his weight in the camp, went on missions when needed, shared what he had, and made sure his partners were sated.

So, was this selfishness or selflessness? Even stripped of his grace, he could see the flaws in Dean’s armor, simply because he knew Dean better than he knew himself.

Careful not to knock over the glasses or the bottle, Castiel moved from a half-lotus to kneel closer to Dean, whose hand moved with Castiel’s face.

“Everything I gave for you, I gave willingly,” Castiel said quietly. He leaned across Dean’s body, one hand on the carpet by his hip, and lifted his other hand to mirror Dean’s touch. He could feel the tension in Dean’s jaw, the rapidity of the pulse beating in his throat.

Dean’s hard green eyes closed.

When they opened, Castiel saw, for the first time in forever, tears.

“Cas…” Dean’s hand slipped from Castiel’s jaw, brushing through his hair, to cup the nape of his neck.

“I’ve always been yours, Dean,” Castiel said, leaning in, giving Dean every chance to stop him.

He didn’t.

When their lips touched, it felt like a broken bone snapping into place, or like the grace returning to Castiel on wings of flame.

The kiss was soft but chaste, barely a touch of dry, whiskey-flavored lips, ending as Dean’s composure broke into a grief-wracked sob. Castiel eased down to sit beside him, the man for whom he’d sacrificed everything, the man who was slowly tearing apart his own soul in the struggle to save the world.

Dean’s arms went around Castiel, holding him tight enough to bruise his mortal flesh as he buried his face against Castiel’s neck.

With the memory of the kiss still on his lips, Castiel pulled Dean close and held him, giving Dean the comfort and support and love that had always been his for the asking. They’d kissed, which was more than Castiel had ever prayed for, and in that kiss, the Fallen angel felt the first stirrings of hope – not for his grace or for the world, but for something far more important.

Dean Winchester’s soul.


End file.
